


The Director's Kid

by BoPeepWithNoSheep



Series: Taz Tumblr Fics [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Balance (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Family Angst, Family Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Kid Fic, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-08-06 19:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16393688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoPeepWithNoSheep/pseuds/BoPeepWithNoSheep
Summary: As soon as Lucretia realizes she's pregnant she knows it's too dangerous to raise the baby herself, but she's given up so much family already, for once, she just wants to hold on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a dumb plot bunny that bit me and I’ve been working on lately because I always see like Momcretia fics where she gives up her kid because she Has A Mission and those are Good but have y’all considered Lucretia who clings to the very last scrap of family she has with both hands??? Have you??? Because I have.
> 
> If you enjoy this and have any prompts for future chapters hit me up in comments or send me something on my tumblr bopeepwritingsheep

Lulu has always known her family wasn’t really normal. Her Mama had died when she was little and her Mother before she was even born. Her big brother, Lucas, says her parents got caught in the search for the relics and it’s why Auntie Keesha wants to find them all so badly. **  
**

Lucas isn’t directly related to her like Auntie Keesha, but that doesn’t make him any less her brother. Auntie Maureen is nice, Lulu thinks she must be a good Mama to Lucas because he seems happy and he’s so smart but she doesn’t really want her for a Mama even when Maureen offers very nicely. Auntie Maureen helps Lulu choose a last name for her Important Papers that Auntie Keesha says she’ll need when she’s older. In the end, she picks two. On paper, she’s a Miller because she wants to be Just Like Lucas when she gets bigger but for her Bureau papers, the _secret_ ones, she chooses Davenport because Auntie Keesha doesn’t have a last name but her Uncle does.

When she tells him he cries, but they’re happy tears.

Most kids have two parents but instead, Lulu has more aunts and uncles than she knows what to do with. First, it’s just Auntie Keesha and Uncle Davenport when she’s very little. Then as time goes on she gets more aunts and more uncles, first Auntie Maureen but soon she has Auntie Carey and Auntie Killian, Uncle Avi, Uncle Brian and Uncle Brad, and even Uncle Leon even if he doesn’t like to be called uncle very much.

He always relents once Auntie Keesha gives him her  _Boss Auntie Look_.

Auntie Keesha is the only one related to her by blood. She’s much older than Lulu’s mama, Auntie never said the exact age difference but Lulu wondered sometimes because she has old memories, her  _earliest_  memory, that must be of her Mama. Dark hands with pencil calluses like Keesha’s but no wrinkles, hair more blonde than white, soft eyes and scratchy lullabies. Mama left once, left her with Uncle Davenport in a fancy metal house and never came back. Instead, Auntie Keesha comes back and tells her that Mama had gotten hurt, that she couldn’t come back but she made Auntie Keesha promise to protect Lulu.

After that, it’s just Auntie Keesha with her sad, wrinkled eyes and Uncle Davenport and his funny words for a little while. They make a game of it when she’s very young, Uncle Davenport saying his name and Lulu saying hers until Lulu is the very best person at understanding what Uncle Davenport is trying to say just listening to his inflection or watching the way his hands dance with each syllable. Sometimes she acts as an interpreter for Auntie Keesha, when Uncle Davenport has bad days and needs help. several times she tries to teach Keesha their stuttering hand language but it’s almost as if Auntie Keesha, the very smartest person she knows can’t understand the simple symbols for food and water and home.

When Lulu tries to ask why Auntie Keesha gets sad, she whispers about a wheel and sacrifices and she cries for a long time. Lulu learns not to stop asking questions when the answer is  _The Wheel_.


	2. Chapter 2

Lulu’s robes make her look like a little Madame Director. She watches Auntie Keesha and learns how to stand tall and tilt her chin and scrunch her eyebrows the same way. Auntie Killian says her Boss Director Look is more of a pout but Uncle Brad says it’s a very good start and if she ever wants to workshop it he and Uncle Brian would be happy to help.

So far it only works on Uncle Avi but Uncle Avi never says no to her anyway so that might not count.

Her little boots are enchanted, painted bright red with little gold buttons that clash horribly with all her blue and white dresses but she doesn’t care. When she steps they sound like little bells, if she trips a gong sounds, and if she falls they cast feather fall so she never scrapes her knees or elbows when she runs around the quad.

Sometimes she plays with Uncle Davenport, when he’s not busy helping Auntie Keesha, they talk with their hands and he helps her pick books from the library to read. He likes the ones about the ocean and Lulu loves the ones about big mysterious forests, one filled with monsters and adventures. When she’s bigger Auntie Keesha says she’ll bring Lulu down to the surface and she can go on her very own adventure. 

Lulu promises herself that she’ll take Uncle Davenport along and they can find someplace with lots of trees next to the sea.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family trip to the Fantasy Costco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene takes place shortly after the bureau is officially started and just after the completion of the moon base!

They walk into the Fantasy Costco and Lucretia can’t help but smile at the absolute wonder in Lulu’s eyes. She’s mostly kept the little girl from wandering too close while the store was under construction. With the moon base complete it’s easier to take her around for exercise and such, though she still keeps her stroller with them just in case Lulu gets tired. 

She’s been a bit worried, that Lulu’s presence would make it harder for her to take her role as Madame Director. That her employees wouldn’t have the same reverent awe of her with a child in tow. It's not so much that she wants to be viewed this way but given the nature of her task, it's imperative that she holds an almost ethereal sort of position above her people. She can't have them asking her questions or becoming suspicious and she's found the best way to prevent such things is to build oneself up as a bit more than human.

It's a lesson she learned from Taako and Lup, if you simply looked enough like you knew what you were doing no one would question you.

Thus far, few have really commented on Lulu’s presence. The story filtering among the employees was true enough in spirit if not fact for Lucretia to refrain from crushing the rumor. Lulu is her niece, an orphan of the relics and the fuel for the director’s passionate quest to destroy them. A true enough tale, a sister stolen by the relics and becoming fiercely protective guardian--A slightly different image than she’d anticipated but Lucretia is willing to take it as she crafts her image and her base to further instill that idea in her new employees.

The safety railings on the moon’s edges are an aesthetic sacrifice for certain but once Lulu really gets her legs under her Lucretia doesn't want her daughter just running off the goddamn thing.

Lucretia finds herself drawn from her thoughts as a small hand tugs lightly at her robes. Lucretia smiles down at her little girl. She’s growing a little bit every day, even if as a half-elf it’s at a slower rate than a human child would. It's made figuring out her milestones a bit difficult but Brad had kindly gifted her with a few guides for half-elven childhood development. A few she’d owned herself once, but they had been some of the first items sacrificed in her time in Wonderland.

Lucretia does her best not to dwell too heavily on that, instead directing her attention fully to the little one at her feet, “Yes, Lulaboo?”

The toddler tugs more insistently at Lucretia’s dress, her free hand outstretched and pointing towards the store’s service counter. The odd swirling entity known as Garfield must be lurking somewhere nearby, his presence always leaves Lucretia on high alert. Were his resources not so extensive she would have blasted him off the moon base herself, but they’ve come to an accord. So long as he keeps himself relatively in line, his presence is tolerated.

“Kitty!”

“Mmm, I'm sorry Lulabee but there isn't a pet section in this store to look at.”

“Big kitty!”

Her daughter points more insistently. That's when Lucretia catches sight of him, the merchant in all of his whirling glory. Features come to fruition before fading back into the vaguely shaped swirling mass. A grin too big for any creature blooms on his formerly blank face.

“Hello, Madame Director! Come to match me in a game of mercantile wit?” The warlocks unblinking eyes lock onto her daughter, who waves enthusiastically at the attention, "Ah, you've got your firstborn with you? A classic bargaining tool!"

There is no patter of footsteps as Garfield closes in on her, from behind the check-out counter and at her side in the span on a blink. An appendage, more solid than a mage hand but somehow less tangible than a flesh arm snakes out and before Lucretia can react Garfield has pressed a small sparkly _‘FANTASY COSTCO’_ sticker onto Lulu’s shirt. The little girl lets out a whoop of glee as she pulls at her little blue toddler onesie to get a better look.

Lucretia can sense the low buzz of tracking magic emanating from it and wonders how she’ll distract Lulu so she can take it and burn it once they get back home. 

Garfield’s grin widens, impossibly and inconceivably wide and full of too many teeth as he makes a small cooing noise in response to Lulu’s excited babble,  "A lot of potential in this one, she's just brimming with Untapped Baby Magic! Why I think you might not even have to trade all of her. Maybe just an ear, or her eyes, I could give you a real  _ bargain _ for her heart--" 

"Garfield. She isn't for sale." Lucretia taps her staff once and suddenly Garfield is pushed back cloak billowing--She thinks she might see stars beneath it’s folds. Without taking her eyes off of Garfield she leans down and plucks Lulu off the floor and places her back in her stroller, better not to have her wandering in this pocket dimension. 

“I’m here for a--I need a beginner's magical focus for my _niece_.” Garfield’s eyes twinkle every conceivable color at her words and he claps two hands. In a whirl of colors, several foci are summoned upon the check-out counter and Lucretia watches each one suspiciously. With another tap of her staff detect magic wafts through the room--The foci seem safe enough but she’ll still put any of them through thorough testing before she hands them off to Lulu during practice.

The first three are all miniature wands which Lucretia dismisses outright, too advanced and too obvious. She won’t have her daughter with a weapon that could be spotted and taken away by any idiot with enough sense to disarm a child. The next was tempting, a diamond necklace both unobtrusive and aesthetically pleasing--Perhaps a good fit for when Lulu’s a little older, not that Lucretia is really sure of when that will happen developmentally given her elven heritage. By human standards, her daughter should be older than she appears but she seems to take after her elven mother. It had been rather alarming at first, but now Lucretia accepts it for what it is, that her daughter is four years old but looks and acts like a two-year-old. She mostly just hopes that her aging stays consistent, it’s difficult with her own artificial age to keep up with such a young child but she’ll do it for Lulu.

The last focus is what really catches her eye, in part because it’s utterly _ridiculous_. A bright yellow box emblazoned with the words _‘Baby’s First Magical Focus!!!!!’_ The picture on the box, a pacifier with a ridiculous multicolored crystal ring makes Lucretia snort and instantly she knows it’s _perfect_. She nods towards the necklace and the box, “These two, please. Put it on my tab.”

Garfield twirls and in an instant both items are bagged and with the clang of a cash register that really shouldn’t exist on this plane, Lucretia is presented with a receipt, “In the bag is fine, thank you for your assistance, Garfield. Until next time.”

“It was a delight to see you again, Madame Director! Let me cast levitate on those for you!” He barely twitches and the bags float, a string is quickly tied to both handles. Lucretia passes the cord along to Lulu who tugs the floating up and down, straight into Garfield’s form. It recoalesces a few feet away and offers a wave, "Keep my offer in my for any Big Purchases you have planned in the future! Like an adorable sentient coupon!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Garfield has been SO MUCH FUN, like he's just a joy to write and I always Do The Voice to make sure the dialogue flows right. Writing from Lucretia's perspective is also interesting because she never stops thinking of herself as Lulu's mother even when she's lying to her that she isn't.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s a man in Auntie Keesha’s living quarters that Lulu doesn’t recognize. She stares up at him and blinks and he blinks back down at her in surprise. Lulu’s never met anyone on the moon that Auntie Keesha hadn’t introduced her to so she furrows her tiny brows.

Lulu opens her mouth and takes a deep breath to scream as loud as she can, just like what Uncle Davenport says to do if she ever found a stranger. However, before she’s able to the man is on his knees before her making all the same panicked shushing noises that Auntie Killian makes when she’s about to cry. It distracts her for just long enough for the man to reach out a spindly gloved hand and tap her against the forehead.

It’s not her naptime yet but everything goes very dark and Lulu falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

Kravitz is panicking--Well, he’s panicking internally because he can’t exactly panic externally when he’s holding a child. A living, breathing, little half-elf wander around the lair of the not-lich but still thoroughly death dodging woman he’s been tracking for a week now.

That’s... _not_ good. Is this how she’s been doing it? Body switching isn’t unheard of and for a moment Kravitz feels sick to his constructed stomach. Her Majesty save him, he hadn’t anticipated children being involved but it’s always a danger with these types.

Kravitz is very carefully lifting the girl up when he hears a clatter behind him, he summons his scythe as he pivots and tucks the girl into his shoulder. He scans the room behind him but sees nothing, still his mind remains on high alert--Something screaming danger into his senses.

He’s still caught completely off guard as a gnome drops from the ceiling and claws viciously at his face.

 

* * *

 

The next time Kravitz finds himself on the strange floating lair he doesn't immediately open a rift into the inner suite as he did the last time. Instead, he finds himself in the rooms just outside. An office, by the looks of things. He takes the time to carefully scope around, leafing lightly through a few loose documents on the desk but none of them involve anything necromatic as far as he can tell. Granted, if these criminals are as competent as their previous elusiveness implies Kravitz thinks the highly warded filing cabinets behind him are where the real information is.

He’ll come back for them once he’s completed the bounty, no reason to risk any death dodging information getting out to the public.

He breathes deeply as he spreads out his reaper senses, he pings the two souls he’s looking for, both out and about within the open sections of their lair. However, what he doesn’t expect is the little living soul that lurks just beyond a section of shelves behind the desk. Kravitz’ eyes narrow, a secret passageway then.

He places a hand against the bookshelf and pushes his soul into it, the out, then into the wall behind it until he’s phased through both obstacles and finds himself back in the space where he’d first rifted into last time. It’s a bit dizzying, using his powers like this, but it’s a quieter option once he gets his bearings back. He holds a hand up to his head as his body reforms and readjusts to being something more fluid than rigid concrete and steel.

Then he hears a soft clattering against the floor.

His first instinct is to cover his face, wary after his last experience here but his eyes quickly lock onto the origin of the sound. That little girl, it’s always hard to tell elven ages even with half-elves but physically she seems around three. She’s dropped her toy, a little clear plastic orb with painted silver lines running some sort of skeletal pattern across the ball. It bounces once before rolling until it bumps Kravitz’ feet.

Every so slowly, remembering the way the little girl had almost screamed the first she saw him, Kravitz forces a small smile onto his face and rolls it back to her. Her eyebrows scrunch up in confusion but after a moment of consideration she mumbles something in--Kravitz thinks it might be _orcish_ \--and pushes the ball back to him.

When he takes just a hair of a moment too long the little girl takes a deep breath, the same way she had the first time they’d met but Kravitz hurriedly pushes the ball back and it seems to quiet her. It goes on for several minutes, the little half-elf taking her time to push the ball back each time but hurrying Kravitz to return it at a much faster pace.

When he finally flails a returning pass that misses the little girl completely he panics, thinking that now, without a distraction, she’ll alert someone to his intrusion. Instead, she bursts into bright, airy giggles and runs after the ball. Kravitz follows after, cautious and light on his feet and _constantly_ glancing up at the vents above him. It’s why he doesn’t notice quiet rattle of screws just as he starts to follow the little girl into what he thinks might be her playroom. The sheer number of accumulated toys and games within the room are surely enough for several children but what catches his attention are the neat little row of identical clear toy balls, lined up next to--a toy cannon?

“Little one, you certainly do have a wide variety of toys--” He’s nearly through his sentence, ready to gently pry for a few bits of information, just to see if she’s safe here when a slicing pain sears through his ankles.

He forgot about floor vents.

 

* * *

 

The fourth time Kravitz appears in the lair of the two errant death criminals it is not a small, dark-skinned and blond haired child he meets. Instead, it is a tall, dark-skinned and white haired woman. She raises one delicate eyebrow at him before raising her stave and tapping it twice against the floor. Kravitz barely has time to dodge the first volley of chromatic orbs, and doesn’t realize he’s vaulted directly into a trap until he slams face first against a prismatic wall.

It burns the flesh away from his face--what is it with these people and his _face_?

He rubs at singed skin along his chin as he watches the woman move towards her barrier, peering out at him with a look in her eyes like he’s the criminal here. “Davenport has warned me of you. Did Garfield send you?”

“Did--What?”

“I know he’s still after my--my niece’s heart. I expected better of him than some undead bounty hunter.”

“I-I am not undead! I am a holy construct of her majesty, The Raven Queen.”

The woman’s brows shoot up and a small look of relief inexplicably washes over her face, “Oh--You’re here for _me._ Hot diggity shit, _that_ certainly changes things then.” Then she raises her staff again and taps the ground three times, Kravitz' ears pop painfully and with a bright flash of light he finds himself back in the astral plane.

Over his next several attempts he quickly finds he prefers the gnome and his daggers to the woman and her thrice damned barriers and banishment spamming.

 

* * *

 

The seventh time Kravitz goes after this particular bounty he has the particularly bad luck to appear with both of his quarry in the same room along with the little girl he has seen and interacted with several times at this point. She grins widely as his presence, throwing one pudgy toddler hand into the air and waving enthusiastically. It does not improve the completely and utterly terrifying glint in the gnome’s eyes as he produces no less than four throwing knives held loosely between his knuckles from _somewhere_.

Kravitz takes a single step back, his scythe poised to tear a rift for a hasty retreat before a loud popping noise fills the room and Kravitz finds himself inexplicably rolling through space his scythe flitting out of existence along with his skin as his divine magic is abruptly cut off.

_Fucking barriers._

The woman trails closer to his bubble, clear amusement written all over her expression. Kravitz would almost call it smug if not for the refined air she seems to exude, “We keep meeting like this, Slim Creeper. One would think you would learn but perhaps that skull of yours is empty.”

Kravitz opens his mouth to reply, shoving bony hands against the front of his bubble trying to stabilize himself. However, right when he thinks he’s not in danger of losing balance one lone dagger careens towards him, hitting the barrier in such a way that he knows it would have flown directly between his eyes if not for the barrier. He can’t help the undignified yelp that squeaks out of his throat, had he flesh right now he knows he would be blushing.

The bubble tips backward and Kravitz falls directly onto his bony ass.

A wild giggle demands the attention of every adult in the room, the little toddler pushing herself down from her chair and wobbling her way towards them. As fast as they appeared the gnome’s knives are tucked away as he clucks what seems like a nonsense word in her direction, then his hands move-- _Sign language?_ \--and the girl returns his gestures in kind.

She’s only distracted for a moment though, as soon as the gnome turns to the human woman, the child skitters forward. She’s giggling again and running toward Kravitz and he knows, mind flashing back to their first time playing. The giggling little half-elf presses her tiny hands against the barrier, Kravitz grimaces and resigns himself to this.

The woman’s attention snaps back just as Kravitz’ bubble tumbles across the room that is now filled with peals of laughter. She hurries forward, scooping the half-elf off the ground and shushing the tiny grumbles at the removal of her plaything.

“No-- _Lup_ , that isn’t a toy.”

Kravitz is in the bubble nearly three days, shoved into some bloody _closet_ , before it finally dissipates and he immediately scrambles back to the astral plane to reconsider his previous strategies.

 

* * *

 

The eleventh time Kravitz appears in search of his second most irritating quarry he is greeted by the lone figure of the littlest of the troublesome trio. He blinks, casting his senses as far as he’s able and is surprised to be unable to feel the woman’s presence at all and the gnome’s presence is so gentle that the man _must_ be sleeping. This is his _chance_ , the moment he’s been waiting for! He flexes his hand, ready to summon his scythe when he feels a gentle tug on his coattails. Kravitz’ glances down and nearly startles as the little girl holds up a tiny box, a children's game of some sort towards him.

“Play?”

Judging by the box Kravitz sees the game is rudimentary. It appears to be a contest of mostly chance and a smidge of color identifying that’s probably the entire purpose of the little thing. Not his normal style but he looks down at the little girl’s wide, dark eyes and his heart caves--Just the smallest bit.

Kravitz has never really been able to say no to wagers anyway.

She leads him back to her playroom that he’s only seen once before. He feels enormous, sitting on the daintiest chair that must be reinforced with magic to be able to hold his weight. So the woman must play with her in these rooms, if there are things meant to support the weight of those larger than half-children and fully grown gnomes.

He has more fun than he’d readily admit to, all things considered. The girl is bright and playful even if he doesn’t understand most of the things she says--And it isn’t because she’s still using babytalk, the little girl cycles through more languages than Kravitz had ever conceived a child able to learn. He tracks orcish, elvish, common, gnomish, draconic, and inexplicably celestial with an accent he’d associate with _Pan’s_ domain.

As he trudges his little game piece across the board he periodically spreads out his senses, just to make sure he isn’t going to be shanked unexpectedly. However, the gnome’s presence remains muted by slumber and eventually, Kravitz simply forgets to keep track of it as the game moves on. He’s going easy on her, of course, not exactly letting her win but giving her a fair chance. He lets her have the cards when she calls out colors in languages he doesn’t know since he can’t _quite_ be certain she’s wrong.

When her little blue game piece arrives at the finish line just three paces before Kravitz’ own he claps for her victory, a wide smile on his face. The little girl herself is ecstatic, laughing and crowing triumphantly in elvish, which he _does_ happen to understand.

“What would you like for your win, little one? Would you like, hmm--” Kravitz pauses as he thinks before he twists his hand, conjuring a little black feather. A little girl who dwells with death criminals could use a blessing from the Raven Queen more than most, he thinks. However, the little girl doesn’t reach out to grab the feather immediately as he had expected, instead, she seems almost pensive. Kravitz almost laughs at the way she taps her palm against her chin like she’s seen someone tap a finger against theirs before and is trying to mimic but at her young age doesn’t quite have the motor skills to do it properly.

She reaches out one tiny hand but instead of taking the feather she grabs his other one to hold, “Leave Auntie Keesha ‘n Uncle Davi alone, please?”

Kravitz is about to laugh before he feels the rush of binding celestial magic through his system. He blinks, staring down at the little girl before him who has now, technically, bested him in a game of chance and skill and requested a boon. Which he is legally and magically obligated to uphold.

“Well, _fuck_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was SO MUCH FUN. Listen, I ADORE fucking with Kravitz pre-canon. It's just, it's a true gift.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update! if you're reading this without having read chapter four I recommend going and reading that because it's Real Good. also!! timeline ref for this one, it takes place roughly a few months before the start of canon when Lucretia is really first cementing her plan to bring the boys in.

“What was Mama like?” Tonight Lulu is speaking in elvish, it’s possibly her strongest language followed closely by common and orcish. She’s not a terribly vocal child to begin with, but Lucretia can’t find herself ever minding too terribly. As far as she’s concerned, her daughter is as perfect as any child could be.

“Oh, Lulabee, she--she was an _amazing_ woman. She would have loved you _so much_.” Perhaps it’s wrong to use Lup in this way, sometimes it feels like she’s a prop in Lucretia’s web of half-truths she weaves around herself for the sake of the world. Except this isn’t for the world, not in the same way.

Lucretia should tell her about her biological mother, about the woman who Lucretia had fought beside to retrieve the staff she now wields against it’s light-born kin. About the woman she had put down when the thrall had ensnared her before Lucretia learned to contain it--but the fact of the matter is Lucretia knows _so little_ about that woman. Knows her name, knows they spent a night together scared and lonely and desperate for some kind of comfort, knows she died because Lucretia was _not strong enough_.

The world has forgotten Xanthe, her life fed to the voidfish, and perhaps Lucretia should honor her with stories but she has none to tell.

But _Lup_ , Lucretia could write soliloquies untold on Lup.

“Why did she leave?” There’s a petulance in Lulu’s voice that gives way to grief that she’s too young to understand. It makes Lucretia’s heart _break_ , tiny cracks that litter the edges and threaten to collapse the entire thing. She stays strong because Lulu’s such an attentive child and she’ll notice if Lucretia allows her own feelings to bleed out of her.

So she clamps down on her own grief, and she lifts her daughter up into her lap, tilting up her chin to look her in the eye, “Sometimes you don't have a choice, baby. Sometimes you have to do things even if you don't want to because it will keep others safe.”

She scrabbles at Lucretia’s hands, little pointed nails like kittens claws at the nick at her skin but Lucretia’s mostly immune to the tiny papercut like pain. The nerves in her hands have been mostly deadened since Wonderland. Lulu’s voice pitches up, readying itself for a full-on wail as she pushed her mother--her aunt away, “She could’ve _stayed_. Kept us safe on the moon like you!”

Before proper tears can spring from the little girl’s eyes Lucretia wraps her arms around her, cradling her daughter as if she were years younger and not slowly growing too large for Lucretia and her artificially aged body to carry. Lucretia stands, pacing lightly and rocking her daughter close to her chest, “Shhh, Lup look at me. Your Mama, she loves you more than words can say. She--She didn't mean to leave the way she did, she wanted to come back to us but she--” Lucretia has to stop to breath, to rein in her own feelings before she starts to weep as her daughter does, “T-The relics _hurt_ her. They hurt the whole world, that's why the Bureau has to destroy them.”

Lulu, _her little Lup_ , clings desperately to the front of Lucretia’s robes hiccuping and pressing her face into her mother’s shoulder, “They won’t take you away, will they?”

Lucretia breathes. Breathes in the scent of her daughter’s hair, the artificial scent of the moon base, breathes in all of the life that surrounds them down below, “No power on any plane could _ever_ take me away from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But Bo, you say, I thought that Lup WAS Lulu's biomom??? Who's Xanthe??? Where's my Blupcretia???
> 
> Well, you have the taz writers discord for the identity of Lulu's other mom being....you know ;)
> 
> ~~And by that, I mean, we're in for some BUCKWILD family drama up in this bitch because Lucretia doesn't know the proper gestation period of half-elves and is making some assumptions about Lulu's other mama.~~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's timeline is a little more finicky and I'll probably pin it down better at some point but it's about five years post-mindwipe. Maureen and Lucretia haven't had their falling out yet and are Very Much a couple.

The first few years of looking, Lucretia is nearly impossible to find. He comes across her trail on occasion, and just once he glimpses Davenport through an inn window but the gnome skitters away before Barry can possess someone and make his way inside.

It stings because maybe there was a period of time where he hadn’t believed--when he’d been in denial that it couldn’t have been Lucretia that did this to them. They hadn’t been--They hadn’t been the closest in the last few years, maybe a decade ago they’d been closer before they’d settled on his and Lup’s plan instead of Lucretia’s.

But they’d been united in their love of Lup, hadn’t they?

How could she make them forget her? How could she take away one of the most important things in his life, the love of his life. The love of her life too, or at least Barry had thought. Maybe it was different for Lucretia, maybe losing Lup had broken her in a wholly different way than him and Taako.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

When he finally tracks her down it’s in Neverwinter, which makes things tricky because in such cities there are usually enough clerics and paladins in an area to warrant more stealth than usual. The fact that he’s even tracked her down at all--well, that warrants just as much stealth because it’s been _years_.

He casts locate object, he can see it in his mind’s eye, the charm bracelet Lup had given her ages ago. They’d slowly built up the charms together, finding them on planes that were friendly enough to make purchases on. Even Barry had gotten in on it once or twice, a few charms from him for birthdays and anniversaries. He doesn’t know if she still wears it--but he hopes.

When he gets a ping he lets out the breath his possessed body had been holding.

He follows the trail like a bloodhound, his borrowed hands skittering, flexing into clenched fists before he forcibly relaxes them. He finds himself walking through one of the nicer parts of Neverwinter, filled with strolling nobles and new money merchants. It certainly isn’t where he’d expect to find Lucretia after so long.

But the spell leads him to a cozy little cafe, the look of it brings back date night memories that have Barry shoving down the sudden erratic pulse of feelings down into a little box in his chest. Later, when he’s not so close, when he’s not one step away from Lucretia slipping out of his grasp again then he’ll think about this. For now, he steals his heart and pushes open the door with borrowed hands.

The sight that greets him is jarring and the sound nearly foreign. It’s been _decades_ , he thinks since he’s heard Lucretia laugh so freely. Snorting giggles Lup had always found so cute--but it isn’t Lucretia, the noise too high pitched, too young. His eyes fall on an impossible sight, on Lucretia sitting in a booth, aged far longer than the years should have warranted but what’s most alarming is the little squirming figure on her lap.

A child, bundled up for the winter weather and squealing happily. Across the table sit a human woman and another child, this one lingering at the edge of childhood and dipping into teenhood by the look of his face. They’re all singing, Lucretia’s smooth alto harmonizing with a breathy soprano and a pitchy tenor.

Happy Birthday, it finally registers to Barry. The littlest one, it’s her birthday.

This isn’t what he expected to find Lucretia doing, to find her with a smile on her face and a child on her lap. With one hand draped across the table to hold the hand of the woman across from her. There’s a slope to her shoulders that he doesn’t remember, and wrinkles on her face that shouldn’t have formed in the few years since he’s seen her but she’s still Lucretia.

He still recognizes the way her eyes are alight with--with love. With a look he’d only ever seen her send towards Lup but she stares at this woman with such gentle eyes. With eyes that Barry has only seen hardened for decades. Barry has spent years wondering what he would find when he finally tracked down Lucretia.

He hadn’t considered he’d find her happy.

“Happy birthday, Little Lulu,” The woman across the table coos as she reaches her free arm out to tug the teenage boy closer, “Do you need Big Lulu to help you blow your candles out?”

The teens’ face goes as red as ipre robes as he tugs himself out of the half hug, “Mom! I told you not to call me that.” Despite his protests, the boy still leans forward as the little girl struggles through the little candles nested atop the little blue cake. When she isn’t looking at him he blows each candle out then gives an exaggerated shrug every time the little girl looks up at him accusingly.

“I’m not _doing_ anything,” He insists, despite not even attempting to hide the grin creeping onto his face, “Don’t be a baby, aren’t you a big girl now?”

The toddler puffs out her cheeks and Barry’s heart aches just a little bit. Lup and Taako had always done that when they were play fighting with each other. The little girl points one pudgy finger at the older boy, “Luc big ‘n bad!”

Lucretia does laugh at that, a soft chuckle as she pets a hand through the little girl’s tight blond curls. Her other hand shifts, just the smallest bit and Barry spots the glint of metal. Just below where a golden charm bracelet rests on Lucretia’s too thin wrist his eyes lock onto a thin silver band with a small blue stone. On the other woman’s hand sits a matching ring.

It’s--It’s too much.

Barry’s hands shake and he feels his hold on the possessed body wavering. Magic rumbles beneath the borrowed skin, a bright ocean of unsteady emotions coloring his vision red and crackling. She’s happy. She did this to them, to all of them, and she’s just careless and happy. How is that fair? The others moved on because they had no idea what they were leaving behind but _Lucretia--_

Lucretia’s replaced them, found a happy stable family without missing wives and endless cycles of pain and violence and _it hurts so much_. The buzz of magic floods his senses, the body he had been possessing crashes down the same moment that Barry floats up and up and up.

 _ **“Lucretia,”**_ his voice booms through the cafe and he watches her face snap towards him. Watches her expression cycle through confusion, fear, and finally settle into something fierce.

It isn’t anger, Barry’s seen Lucretia angry before and this expression is too pinched, too anxious as she stares at his glowing lich form. Her mouth pressed into a firm line she lifts the little girl over the table, pushing her into the other woman’s arms. “Take them, Maureen. Go.”

“Mom, what the _fuck_ \--” The teen starts but his mother, his other mother because he’d used the epithet while looking at _Lucretia_ , grabs him by the collar and drags him out of his seat. Once they're standing she passes the little girl into her brother’s arms before sending Lucretia a significant look, “Stay safe, love.”

The little girl is just as disturbed as the older boy, her hands reaching out and grasping for the Lucretia. She struggles even as the woman--Maureen tugs the two of them in a wide berth around him her tiny cries filling the cafe above the din of panicked customers fleeing.

“Keesha!! No!! Don’t leave Keesha! Davi!!”

His eyes are fixed on the crying child, the spitting image of Lucretia but her ears-- _the little points of her ears_. Barry feels almost dizzy, a little half-elf, like they’d all talked about if they ever found an end to their journey. If they ever found someplace safe. It’s Lucretia’s voice, low and commanding that pulls him from a gaze transfixed on the little ghost of a past future.

“Barry! Listen to me, you don’t have to do this.”

His thoughts jerk back to the present, back to his anger and despair, _**“You replaced us. You replaced** her. **”**_

“I-I didn’t Barry--Lup is _gone_. We looked _everywhere_ for her, Barry.” Lucretia looks so different, the girl who held Lup’s other hand is completely gone. Maybe they lost her when they lost Lup, maybe when they created the relics, or maybe all the way back during that lonely year of survival and desperation. Barry isn’t certain and he doesn’t want to think about it.

 _ **“She can’t be gone! We were still looking! We would have kept looking but**_ you--you _ **did this! You erased her and you erased us so you could have this!”**_

Barry’s arm whips out towards Lucretia’s little family, Maureen, Luc, and Lulu and--and he doesn’t intend for the wave of necrotic energy he sends towards them. He only realizes he’s released it at all a split moment too late, when Lucretia screams and so does her--her _wife_. When the human boy tumbles to the ground, a smoking burn stripe on his back, his body wrapped around the little girl.

He recoils--He didn’t--He didn’t _mean_ to hurt them, maybe Lucretia maybe deep down he wants someone to pay for his suffering but not innocents. Not _children_. His mind stutters, processing what he’s done--Gods, are they breathing? He moves closer and prays to any god that will still listen to him, please let them be breathing.

_“Gods, no--I’m sorry--I-I didn’t mean to--fuck, I just--”_

But he never has a chance to finish, or to get any closer to the children to assess the damage. The moment he floats forward a stabbing pain he hasn’t felt since his last body’s death digs agonizingly into his body. When he cranes his spectral gaze down he sees phantasmal daggers skewering his form, the design he recognizes, the careful spiral to the handles. All traditional gnomish designs.

_“C-Captain?”_

His voices stutters, distorted and crackling as the gnome shoots into view. He dives in front of the children, a wand clutched in one hand and a dagger in the other. Barry’s only ever seen the look in his eyes directed at enemies, at people who hurt his family. Never them, never any of them but now Barry isn’t family, because Lucretia took that away. He feels another surge of dark roiling magic within his construct but then his attention is snatched from his wrathful captain as the boy on the ground groans and thank gods that means he’s alive it means--

Another searing pain, this time in his back and Barry turns just in time to see Lucretia, tears down her face and true rage as she rushes past him. He expects another attack, he--does he deserve it? If he’d hit Lucretia maybe he wouldn’t but he’d hit her--her children.

Gods, she has _children_.

There’s something about that thought, paired with the look on Captain Davenport’s face. Absolutely no recognition, only a look of utterly spine chilling wrath. The man isn’t his Captain, in his neat blue suit with his cold blue eyes. He’s a spectre, a revenant Lucretia has raised against him. Maybe his Captain is in there, somewhere but he’s lost to Barry in this moment and Lucretia--

He turns his gaze to Lucretia where she kneels beside the children, a hand on the boy’s back muttering healing spells under her breath. For a moment he sees a different boy on the ground and the same/different girl, Magnus and Lucretia, on one plane or another, the fighter dying in her laps as she frantically tries spell after spell.

He can’t--He can’t _be_ here.

Swirls of necrotic energy surge in his core, he isn’t sure what the backlash of the spell will be as he vanishes from the cafe. He’s never teleported while this out of it before, but he knows Lucretia. Or well he _doesn’t_ , but he hopes for the sake of the surrounding civilians that at least in regard to her penchant for barrier magic she’s the same. He’s done--No, she had done the initial harm but the people he hurt today hadn’t deserved it.

He hopes the boy is okay and tries to take some kind of schadenfreude from the pain in Lucretia’s face he’d glimpsed.

It really doesn’t work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeaaaaah, Barry's not doing too hot in this one. I wanted to make it clear that he's angry for entirely valid reasons but he's unintentionally lashing out at the wrong people because his magic is unstable due to his emotional state. I also wanted to establish a little more Maurcretia and past Blupcretia because I live for BOTH those pairing.
> 
> Lucas is also older than Barry is assuming he is, Barry thinks he's like 15 but he's somewhere closer to 18 he's just a scrawny babyfaced brat.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest with yall timeline for this one is like??? vague as hell??? it could honestly take place pretty much at any point between the bob being established to right before the arrival of THB

Sometimes she thinks about the Starblaster. She doesn’t visit the hanger often, not like she visits Fischer, there are too many memories to go so frequently but the occasional visit still happens. She never lingers long in the rooms of her family members, once she’d figured out decent stasis spells she never even had to go in to tidy things up.

She visits her room the most, and the infirmary almost as often--It’s where her daughter was born, after all. Tiny and screaming and so miraculously hale and whole in spite of everything. She hadn’t had the option of going to a proper hospital at the time, she’d just barely been able to find a proper midwife and weaving illusions to turn the Starblaster into something more palatable had been a chore in her state.

But, against all odds, things went well, Lulu was born healthy and Lucretia herself came out well enough. Davenport was the first to hold the baby, and Lucretia can still remember the look on his face. It had been the first time she’d seen him so lucid in months and the first time she heard him speak gnomish in over a year. She’d nearly cried then, over her daughter and her captain and they were both so beautiful and why did everything have to be like this?

For a moment she felt regret, not for what she had done so much as that her family could not be here for this moment. That Lup and Barry couldn’t hold her baby, that Magnus wouldn’t cry and marvel at her tiny fingers and toes, that Merle had missed clucking at her to take her prenatal vitamins, that Taako hadn’t been here to tease her about all the strange cravings she had and that half of the food she wanted wasn’t even on this plane.

All of it lost and all the thoughts just ideas and stories. None of it's  _real_ because she’ll never get to know what they would have done--Because she did what _had_ to be done, what no one but perhaps Lup was willing to do, try and fix their mistakes.

When she visits the ship she trails her hands along the walls, lets her fingers dip into dents and scratches in the metal. She thinks about the bond engine, about the way it brought her family together in as they had never expected. She thinks about the long year all alone. Only her, Fischer’s despairing cries, and the purr of it’s engine. Now isn’t so dissimilar really, that keeps her going sometimes, just remembering she's done this before with less.

She’s survived a year alone and really she only thought she’d have to survive one more but time drags on here, as it never had in the century. There are no resets, decisions made are decisions to be lived with and actions taken can’t be waited out for the next cycle.

Lulu is perhaps the greatest example of that, and unexpectedly Lucretia’s greatest motivator. She still wants to save the world, she still wants to do everything in her power to undo the hurt her family has done, she wants to destroy the hunger and free them all from it’s looming spectre--But she also doesn’t think she’d survive another reset anymore, not if it means losing Lulu.

So Lucretia visits the bond engine, it isn’t often, but every time she does she sits and tells it stories. She pushes all of her love into her words, into each detail of her daughter’s features from the sound of her laugh to the color of her eyelashes. It’s a desperate hope, it’s certainly not a failsafe but even if it doesn’t work she has to try. She can’t force a bond, no one can really. However, if the engine understands her love, understands just how desperate she is and listens to her like it did once upon a time when she was all alone and her love and terror filled it’s core with power that might mean something. She doesn't pray to the gods, they've never been there to help her but she prays to the bond engine, and hopes it can be swayed.

“Please,” she begs, “If you have to reset take her with us. If you can only have seven leave me but _please_ , keep her safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SWEAR I HAVE NON-ANGST COMING UP!! I SWEAR!!!


End file.
